Tag: Uttar Pradesh

How can Modi be beaten in 2019? Following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s byelection reverses last week, the consensus in the commentariat clearly leans towards a grand alliance (or mahagathbandhan) of opposition parties of the sort that humbled BJP in Bihar in 2015 and in three recent Uttar Pradesh parliamentary byelections. The subtext is that an “arrogant” Indian National Congress should be more generous towards regional parties, possibly even putting forward a non-Congress candidate as prime minister to cement a grand alliance.

But is it valid to extrapolate from parliamentary bypolls to national politics? Gilles Verniers and Rajkamal Singh argue not, saying “bypolls do not have a predictive value for the following state or general election” and that they reflect mostly local factors, such as the interplay among influential political families in Kairana. There does seem to be some truth to this — the United Progressive Alliance won 6 of 12 bypolls in 2012 and 2013 and the simple average of its vote rose 2 percentage points vis-à-vis the 2009 general election. Yet it was routed in 2014.

If you look closely at parliamentary – as opposed to state – byelections though (see charts below), there does seem to be a correlation in terms of vote swing between how the UPA did in the by-elections and in the subsequent general election. The simple average of the vote swing away from the UPA in the seats that had byelections is similar to the national swing in 2014, implying that they may have been representative of the national picture.

It is striking how poorly the BJP has done in comparison with the UPA, winning only one of the 13 seats that had parliamentary byelections in 2017 and 2018. It seems difficult to imagine the BJP reversing all of the ground it has ceded in those seats between now and 2019. Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra are all states that were central to Modi’s 2014 victory. It might be challenging for the BJP to make up these losses with evident gains in eastern states such as West Bengal. There is reason for the BJP to worry.

Do the byelection results support the proposition that the opposition cannot win in 2019 without a mahagathbandhan? Not really. Of the 15 seats that just had elections, only four were won by an opposition grand alliance. Non-BJP parties won three seats fighting alone and another five were won by longstanding state alliances in Bihar (RJD-Congress) and Maharashtra (Congress-NCP).

The case for a mahagathbandhan is obviously strongest in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP remains ahead of the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party individually by quite a margin. It suffered a major vote erosion only in Phulpur; in Gorakhpur and in Kairana it slipped but still polled strongly in the high 40s.

That doesn’t mean that a grand alliance is the answer everywhere. The BJP and its allies rule 12 of India’s 20 biggest states, and the INC is in a position to defeat it – either singly or with its existing allies – in all but Uttar Pradesh. The one ally that could make a difference is the BSP whose vote base overlaps with that of the Congress, as in Madhya Pradesh where an alliance seems to be in the works. In a close election, the addition of the BSP vote could make the difference between victory and defeat in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, states that contributed 62 of 65 seats to the BJP in 2014 and will hold elections in a few months.

Whether Mayawati is amenable to a broader alliance, and on what terms, remains to be seen. It is often said that the BSP suffers because allied parties do not transfer their votes even as they they benefit from the BSP’s vote bank. However this does not appear to be the case in the BSP’s biggest alliances. In 1993 and 1996, the BSP allied with the SP and the INC respectively in the Uttar Pradesh state elections. The BSP’s vote share in the seats it contested was only about percentage point lower than its partners’, suggesting that a smooth transfer of votes occurred.

To sum up, the BJP is facing a serious erosion of votes that is making the 2019 election much more competitive than in 2014. But with the exception of Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, the results suggest that the INC should be judicious about ceding ground to potential allies rather than rushing into a mahagathbandhan. In 2004 and 2009, the INC became the single-largest party by winning 35% and 47% of the 417 and 440 seats it had contested respectively. If the party cedes more space to a mahagathbandhan and ends up contesting, say, 300 seats, it will be difficult for it to come close to the 150 mark needed to block the BJP’s claims and to form a stable coalition.

An Economic Times (ET) report on 26 Apr credited the newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh (UP) for a dramatic turnaround in the state’s electricity situation. The news report claimed that UP had “shed blackouts within a month of the BJP taking over the reins, moving from perennially running short of electricity to ‘zero-shortage’ in April”.

Soon enough, Power Minister Piyush Goyal shared the article with an approving tweet:

It is certainly true that UP’s energy deficit (measured in million units) hit a record low in Mar 2017 of 0.2%, compared to a much bigger gap of 10.5% a year ago in Mar 2016. However, it would be ridiculous to give the new government credit for this improvement: the UP election results were declared on 11 Mar, and a new government sworn in on 19 Mar.

The ET article cited unpublished data from the National Load Despatch Centre, which oversees the national electricity grid, to show that this improvement continued into April, but we’ll have to wait for numbers from the Central Electricity Authority to get a clearer idea.

But regardless of how April turns out, the ET claim completely elides the fact that power shortages in UP, and indeed all over India, have strongly diminished over the past year, as this chart vividly shows:

India’s energy deficit fell sharply in the first half of 2016, and particularly so in UP. UP’s deficit (shown here as a 3-month moving average) converged with north India’s around Sep 2016, and by Dec 2016 had fallen below that level. This was unanticipated: the Central Electricity Authority’s 2016-17 Load Generation Balance Report had anticipated that UP would have an energy deficit of 6.5%, but it turned out to be only 1.7%. Since the BJP ran the state only 13 of those 365 days, the decline in UP’s power shortage had little to do with it, Goyal’s celebration notwithstanding.

Even so, fewer blackouts and less load shedding can only be good news, right?

Yes and no. As much as India’s power capacity has risen in recent years, it is more weak growth in demand that accounts for the disappearance of India’s once-chronic electricity shortages (see chart below):

The chart above shows a steady decline in the growth of energy demand since 2014-15, both in UP and in India. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing; many economies display lower energy intensity as they grow, and technological advances could also play a role. Consider the UJALA scheme to promote energy-efficient LED bulbs: government claims likely overstate the energy savings by a factor of two (see Why you shouldn’t be bedazzled by Modi’s LED claims), but their adoption probably shaved a percentage point off 2016-17 energy demand. However, if the decline in demand reflects industrial weakness, and the lingering effects of demonetization, that would be an unhealthy sign. And the rapid decline in the growth rate of energy demand in the past two years is worrying.

Either way, one thing is clear: the ending of UP’s power shortage is part of a broader structural story that has little to do with the new UP state government. And no amount of PR claims dressed up as news reports can change this reality.

There’s nothing like the word Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) to make even the most boosterish Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporter sweat a little. And it’s not just because of what happened in Bihar in 2015, when an alliance of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, Janata Dal (United) and Indian National Congress (INC) inflicted a defeat on the BJP. Ever since 1977, dominant parties – the INC until the 1980s, the BJP now – have been vulnerable to a united opposition challenge. Which is why Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav have both urged the INC to engineer a national-level grand alliance to break the BJP’s current ascendance.

Uttar Pradesh (UP) is of course the lynchpin of the BJP’s national dominance, having contributed 71 of its 282 Lok Sabha seats in 2014. That is why its recent state election victory was such good news for the party, since it places the BJP on a strong footing for the 2019 election, only two years away now.

The best way to stop the BJP juggernaut, at this point, seems to be a Mahagathbandhan in UP. After the Emergency, an opposition alliance forced the INC’s Lok Sabha seats in UP down from 73 (of 85) in 1971 to exactly zero in 1977. Its state assembly tally fell from 215 in 1974 to 47 in 1977. Little more than a decade later, another grand alliance knocked the INC down from 83 Lok Sabha seats in 1984 to 15 in 1989. In the state assembly, the INC dropped from 269 seats in 1985 to 94 in 1989. Grand alliances in UP have proved effective in countering dominant political parties.

Like the previous instances, a UP grand alliance might not be more than a stopgap. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Samajwadi Party (SP) have a history of animosity that won’t be easy to overcome, though the INC could play mediator between former rivals as it did in Bihar.

So what impact might a Mahagathbandhan have had on the just completed state elections? Here’s what the new UP state assembly looks like:

A simple addition exercise shows that the BJP and its allies exceeded the combined vote share of the SP, BSP and INC in 115 state assembly seats. If we include the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), this number drops to 101.

What about the Lok Sabha? The BJP and its allies won more votes than a theoretical Mahagathbandhan in only 25 seats (24 if you include the RLD), compared with its 2014 tally of 73. The BJP would still have won the national election, but its Lok Sabha tally would have been down to (a still impressive) 236.

There are obvious caveats: it’s not clear that parties’s vote banks will seamlessly transfer to grand alliance partners. Some portion of BSP and SP voters who dislike the other party could instead vote for a third party, which could even be the BJP. Or party workers could be unenthusiastic for a candidate in their constituency from a different party. For instance, INC candidates on average won fewer votes in the 2017 UP election than did SP candidates, which political scientist Gilles Verniers sees as evidence that “SP supporters did not transfer their votes to Congress supporters to the same extent that Congress supporters did”.

On the other hand, a grand alliance that looks like a potential winner could gain votes purely on momentum. The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies’ 2014 National Election Study found strong evidence for such a bandwagon effect: 43% of voters said that they chose the party they thought was leading the race.

Either way, the compelling logic of a grand alliance in UP suggests that the parties the BJP defeated in 2017 will put in a serious effort to get one going. Whether it happens or not is the 80-seat question.

Now that the dust has settled on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s historic victory in Uttar Pradesh, let’s get down to the big question: how close does it get the ruling National Democratic Alliance to a Rajya Sabha majority, and when? The government’s minority status in the RS has slowed and even halted important elements of its legislative agenda, such as the GST and land acquisition amendments. An upper house majority would greatly strengthen its ability to pass bills, but it could also embolden the Sangh Parivar to push its core ideological issues such as a uniform civil code, eliminating Article 370 and perhaps even transforming India into a “Hindu Rashtra”.

Here’s what the Rajya Sabha currently looks like:

UP is clearly the prize in the RS: it contributes 31 of the upper house’s 245 seats, of which ten will have elections in 2018 and another ten in 2020. With a supermajority in the UP state assembly, the BJP is likely to win seven new seats from UP in each round (it already has three RS MPs in UP).

Adding up all the states, the NDA will gain a total of 18 seats in 2017 and 2018 (including two grabbed from the Congress Party in Goa and Manipur), while the Congress Party and its allies’ tally will drop by a similar amount.

Those are meaningful shifts in seats, but not enough to give the NDA control of the upper house, where it will remain short by about 30 seats (as this blog anticipated in 2014). It will continue to require the support of regional parties like the Trinamool Congress, AIADMK and Samajwadi Party to pass bills through the RS.

Things improve for the NDA in 2019 and 2020. If we assume no major changes in the state elections held in 2018 and 2019 (a strong but unavoidable assumption since we can’t predict the future), the NDA approaches an RS majority only in 2020.

The ruling coalition will still fall a few seats short, but should be able to corral support from a wide selection of regional parties to pass bills. The good news, at least for people wary of the BJP’s Hindutva agenda, is that the BJP will lack the power to change India’s constitution. But it should be able to push economic reform bills through both houses if its allies are supportive.

The bad news: the BJP has every intention – as revealed by Adityanath’s anointment as UP chief minister – to push ahead with hardline Hindutva. And if the environment is polarized enough, there is no guarantee that the BJP’s allies won’t cave to an aggressive right-wing assertion. Assuming, of course, that 2019 is in the bag for the BJP.

As counting day on 11 March approaches, it seems as difficult as ever to gauge which way the political wind in Uttar Pradesh (UP) is blowing. Even before the campaign began, pre-election opinion polls offered little help, showing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress alliance neck and neck, with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) lagging.

We know from elections in Delhi (2015), Bihar (2015) and West Bengal (2016) that a dead heat in pre-election polls is almost never a good predictor of the eventual outcome.

So what are the BJP’s chances of pulling off a win? If the starting point is the BJP’s historic 2014 victory, its lead seems unassailable. The BJP won 328 of 403 assembly segments, including 253 with more than 40% of the vote, and as Praveen Chakravarty states, for it to win fewer than 200 seats even if “two of the opposition parties get together, the BJP would still have to lose more than 10% of its voters”.

But if the baseline is the 2012 state election, the SP-Congress alliance begins to look formidable. As Karthik Sashidhar writes: “it will take a 7 percentage point swing from the 2012 elections to pull the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance below the halfway mark”. While this sounds big, it is well within the realm of possibility: in 2014, the SP dropped seven percentage points from its 2012 tally, giving the BJP a sweep in that four-cornered contest.

So which is it? The opinion poll numbers suggest that 2014 is, in fact, the appropriate baseline: 33% represents a near doubling of the BJP vote in the past three state elections and a decisive break from UP’s two-party dominant system. Yet it is undeniable that the SP-Congress alliance has raised the threshold of votes any party needs to attain a majority, transforming the contest from a seeming BJP walkover to a tough fight.

One way to resolve this impasse is to look at UP by-elections. Since the 2014 general election, the state has had 18 assembly by-elections: 11 in 2014, two in 2015 and five in 2016. These constituencies are fairly representative of the state: they are distributed across UP, and their combined 2014 general election vote shares approximate how the whole state voted in 2014, albeit with a slight bias of 3-4 percentage points each towards the BJP and INC (see table below).

And this is how those 18 constituencies’ votes moved, from 2012 to 2014 to the subsequent by-elections:

Note that the BJP’s vote share fell about 11 percentage points in the by-elections, while that of the SP rose more than 24 percentage points. The BJP retained only three of the 14 assembly constituencies in which it had a lead in 2014, and lost 11 to the SP. That’s a sharp fall in votes compared with 2014.

There are two obvious caveats. One is that ruling parties tend to do very well in by-elections. Voters calculate that having a ruling party legislator is more beneficial for their constituency, and parties in power tend to win by-elections about 2/3rds of the time. The second is that the BSP does not generally contest by-elections, so the 2014-16 numbers aren’t strictly comparable to 2012 and 2014 when the BSP was in the fray.

But that’s also the bad news for the BJP. One reason it did very well in the general election is that many BSP voters – including Dalits and MBCs – preferred Modi in 2014. But in the subsequent by-elections, the BSP’s vote appears to have gravitated towards the SP rather than to the BJP. It’s possible that incumbent advantage, including control of the state’s law-and-order machinery, contributed to this shift, but the BJP will have to fight to retain its 2014 voting bloc.

Such big drops in vote share are not unheard of in the wake of “wave” elections, such as in 1984. In November that year, the INC won 51% of votes in Uttar Pradesh, only to slip three months later to 39% in the state election that followed. Even bigger dips have occurred: in 1987, the INC won 29% in Haryana, a sharp drop from the 55% it received in 1984.

Now 1984 was a long time ago, and the obvious counter-argument is that UP has seen many big political events since the by-elections that could put wind beneath the BJP’s wings. These include the army raid across the Line-of-Control, demonetisation, the civil war in the SP and the high-pitched election campaign in which the BJP has brought out its big guns. And voters could decide that the BJP deserves a chance to run UP after successive BSP and SP governments.

But the reality is that the BJP’s vote share has dropped substantially since its 2014 victory, and the SP-Congress alliance has built a vote chest that makes it imperative for the BJP to outperform. As it happens, in the 2015 Bihar election, by-election vote shifts overstated the ruling alliance’s vote share but captured the drop in the vote share of the BJP and its allies. The BJP should hope that it won’t be the same story in UP.

After a merciless series of election defeats since 2014, it’s tempting to write off the Congress as a leading national force. With few visible signs of a Congress revival, some argue that India’s regional parties are now the main bulwark against the BJP.

This certainly seems to be the case with the next big state election: Uttar Pradesh in 2017. The Congress is very much the underdog, with the BSP seemingly best positioned to beat back the BJP. The Congress’ current irrelevance was shown up — if in a small way — in the two recent UP by-elections where, in the absence of the BSP, voters dissatisfied with the Samajwadi Party gravitated towards the BJP.

But it may well be premature to write off the Congress. Even in its present nadir, the Congress is either the ruling party or the principal opposition in six of India’s 12 largest states (which account for 80% of the Lok Sabha seats). The BJP, at its current zenith, is one or the other in six states, although it clearly hopes to add UP to this list soon. Obviously ruling a state counts for more than being the opposition, but the Congress remains the only feasible alternative in a big swath of the country. Recall that the party ruled only two such states (Orissa and Madhya Pradesh) when Sonia Gandhi took over in March 1998. In military terms, the party’s intentions might seem suicidal to some, but its capabilities cannot be ignored.

Things will remain tricky for the party through early 2017. It will need to put in a respectable performance in UP, which at a minimum means winning enough seats to affect government formation in the state. It will have to fight off a challenge from the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab and retain some of the smaller states. This won’t be easy: The BJP could lose a third of its 2014 UP vote of 42% in a four-way race and still have a chance of winning the state.

But once the Congress is past this stage, opportunities may begin to open up in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, all of which are ruled by the BJP and together account for 91 of the 543 parliamentary seats. The Congress won just three of the 91 in 2014. As tempting as it is to project BJP’s invincibility indefinitely into the future, the fact is that all of these governments are vulnerable to a challenge, and the Congress will be the only party positioned to take advantage.

Gujarat has been plagued by a Patidar agitation and its chief minister is facing allegations of cronyism. The three-term Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh governments are also battling corruption charges, while Rajasthan tends to seesaw between the BJP and Congress (although the BJP will also be defending a large vote margin — as the AIADMK just managed in Tamil Nadu). The Congress will be in danger of losing its last major state, Karnataka, but the risks will weigh against the BJP.

So how does any of this matter? Despite the 2014 Modi wave, the national landscape is still shaped by state politics. While dissatisfaction with the UPA was obviously a factor, the data from the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies show that satisfaction with the ruling state government was perhaps the most important determinant of voting. Consider that the Congress’ 2014 vote share in Karnataka actually rose in comparison with 2013; but the BJP gained seats because of its merger with BS Yeddyurappa’s splinter party.

It is possible, as many commentators assert, that the Indian voter’s disenchantment with the Congress is irreversible. But it’s too easy to extrapolate the most recent trend into the future. Nationally, the Congress is positioned to the left of the BJP, ready to reap any disappointment with Narendra Modi’s development rhetoric, possesses a deep bench of younger leaders and has more boots on the ground than any other contender.

And if the party shakes off its stupor and survives the UP and Punjab elections, it has the chance to take the battle to the BJP heartland.

The UPA is clearly trailing in opinion polls, but this does not mean that a high turnout is necessarily bad news for the alliance. The chart below shows no obvious relationship between voter turnout and the level of anti-incumbency in Indian elections.

That said, the turnout figures for Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are striking, and it will be worth watching whether they persist in subsequent rounds of voting in those states. This could be good news for the NDA if the increases are being driven by younger voters who — opinion polls show — are leaning towards the Narendra Modi-led alliance.

But if they are being driven by women (as occurred in the 2013 state elections) this could offer some relief to the UPA. Although the UPA performed poorly in those elections, both the CNN IBN-CSDS-Lokniti-The Week (see tables 3a and 3c) and NDTV-Hansa Research Group polls show that the female vote nationwide is divided equally between it and the NDA, while the male vote is decisively tilting in favour of the NDA.

It seems clear that Uttar Pradesh (UP) with its 80 Lok Sabha seats is the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) biggest bet in this election and that Narendra Modi is standing from Varanasi in order to boost the BJP’s prospects across eastern UP.

With a couple of exceptions, many people are assuming that Modi will easily win in Varanasi even if Arvind Kejriwal joins the contest. For instance CNN-IBN’s Sagarika Ghose tweeted this yesterday from Varanasi:

But don’t take anything for granted, as the following analysis by two political scientists suggests. Modi will probably still pull off a win in the face of adverse local politics, but he may have a fight on his hands.

The implications of the choice of the BJP to field Narendra Modi in the Varanasi constituency need to be explored a bit more. It is not simply that the BJP has to do very well in UP, and that Modi contesting in the state gives them a much better chance (which I would agree with), and that this is a signal that Hindutva will remain central to the BJP (possibly true).

It is not at all clear that Modi would win the seat, and certainly will have to expend a good deal of effort if he wants to have a chance. In 2009, the party-wise vote shares were: BJP (30.5%), Bahujan Samaj Party (27.9%), Samajwadi Party (18.6%) and Indian National Congress (10.0%). Jolie Wood, who teaches political science at Allegheny College, writes (on 19 Mar):

As someone who has spent some time doing fieldwork in Varanasi and has met many major local political figures there, I agree . . . that it is not at all clear that Modi will win in Varanasi.

The city is often viewed as a “BJP stronghold”, but it is not exactly that. First, Muslims make up about 27% of the city population and at least 30% of the district’s population (according to the admittedly outdated 2001 census). Joshi won his seat with just over 17,000 votes over a Muslim candidate who was not previously very prominent and is widely seen as a mafioso. The business community, probably the best organized occupational group in the city, is not entirely pro-BJP – the SP also has a very strong organisation among them. Many in the business community (including those loyal to the BJP) are quite wary of anyone who might inflame communal sentiment and in fact discouraged more right-wing elements of the BJP from pushing the Gyanvapi Masjid/Kashi Vishwanath Mandir issue because it was bad for business.

If we look at other reasons why the city is seen as a BJP stronghold, we can also see some reason for doubt. Take, for example, the current Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs). The MLA of Varanasi South is Shyamdeo Rai Chaudhary, who has held that seat for something like 6 or 7 terms now. He is personally popular and is seen as someone who is decent, trustworthy, non-corrupt, and (importantly) not super partisan or “communal”. Jyotsana Srivastava is not a major political player by herself – she alternates terms (more or less) with her very popular, much higher profile, husband Harishchandra Srivastava. These MLAs win consistently on the basis of their personal stature, as much as or more than on the basis of their party identification. Finally, the MLA from Varanasi North, Ravindra Jaiswal, is a business leader who is a first-time MLA, and who holds a seat in a district that has usually gone for Muslim candidates linked to the Ansari community, which is particularly strong in that constituency. I would not assume that he or any BJP candidate can easily hold onto that seat.

So, my point is that the BJP’s current dominance of Varanasi’s elected offices is not necessarily due to the strength of the BJP per se. Add to this that the very large Muslim community tend to support SP, Congress, or BSP. Congress has done very poorly in the city for the last several elections. The SP and BSP have much stronger organizations in Varanasi than does Congress, so I’m not sure why some discount their role in the coming election, though it is true that they’ve never fielded a strong candidate for the MP seat.

The big question for me is how they will approach this election. If they form an alliance with AAP, it could weaken the BJP considerably. [But] I really wonder if AAP could coordinate any kind of agreement with BSP and SP. And while Mukhtar Ansari may have won a lot of votes in 2009, I actually don’t know if the BSP is that much stronger in Varanasi than it was in 2007, when it had no presence at all, even when Mayawati won an outright majority in the state. I do know that Congress had become a total non-player by then.

I do think that if Muslim voters backed AAP in a more or less unified way, then Kejriwal might have a chance, but if BSP fields Mukhtar Ansari again, that probably won’t happen. (Also, many Shia Muslims in Varanasi support BJP.)

Jolie’s analysis seems sound to me, and it raises an important question: If this is a seat for which Modi must fight, and if fighting for it means spending significant time in Varanasi that he might otherwise have spent travelling throughout the country, then perhaps this choice of seat might weaken the BJP’s campaign.

And if it so happen that Modi loses – and here the importance of Jolie’s point that in effect “communalism can be bad for business” is particularly important. If Modi tones down his Hindutva rhetoric, then what happens in those parts of UP where that would draw votes and, more important, a hyperactive “base” of political workers? And if the BJP and its pre-election allies and supporters fall short of a majority, then having an alternate BJP prime minister becomes a serious possibility.